An impartial and complete United Nations-led inquiry into the month-long conflict between Israel and Hizbullah earlier this year is urgently needed, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.
The London-based human rights group issued the call for an inquiry as it
published its own report chronicling evidence of violations of international law during the 34-day conflict.
"A full, impartial UN-led inquiry that includes provision for reparations to the victims is urgently needed," said Malcolm Smart, director of the group's Middle East and North Africa programme.
"Anything less would not only be a gross betrayal of the civilian victims, more than one thousand of whom were killed, but also a recipe for further civilian bloodshed with impunity."
Titled "IsraelLebanon, Out of all proportion -- civilians bear the brunt of the war", the report alleges that Israeli forces carried out "indiscriminate" and "disproportionate" attacks on civilians within southern Lebanon, where Hizbullah is dominant.
Amnesty singled out Israel's use of cluster bombs during the campaign -- bombs which contain dozens of smaller explosive devices that spread over a wide area, thousands of which were dropped on south Lebanon during the conflict and failed to explode, "leaving a lethal legacy that continues to blight civilian lives".
Since the August 14 end to the campaign, 23 people have been killed and another 136 injured in Lebanon after stepping on or handling unexploded components of cluster bombs, according to an AFP count.
It emerged on Monday, through reports on Israeli public television and on the website of the Yediot Aharonot daily, that the Israeli army disobeyed an order from its chief of staff in the use of cluster bombs.
Public television did not cite its sources, but Yediot Aharonot cited an initial probe by the army.
It was not clear from either report whether this was a blanket ban on the use of cluster bombs in any conflict, or just in the 34-day war against
Hizbullah.
The human rights group also investigated the alleged use of civilians as "human shields" by Hizbullah during the conflict.
While it noted that Hizbullah used stored rockets in villages and fired them from civilian areas, "it is not apparent that civilians were present and used as 'human shields' in the instances examined," Amnesty said.
Amnesty said that on both sides, inquiries had either been non-existent or inadequate.
"Israeli authorities regularly expressed regret for civilian casualties but have given no or inadequate explanations for specific attacks," the group said. "No investigation into violations of international humanitarian law by Hizbullah is known to have been conducted by Hizbullah commanders or by the Lebanese authorities."
Along with a UN-sponsored international commission empowered to investigate the allegations on both sides, and to issue reparations to victims, Amnesty called for an arms embargo for both Israel and Hizbullah and an "immediate moratorium on cluster weapons."